Anastasia walked barefoot across a dusty plain. The earth, warm beneath her feet, caressed her skin like soft silk. She kicked at the ground and the dust billowed around her legs. She knelt, dug her hands in to her elbows, wallowed in the creamy nebula. A giggle distracted her, and then another. She turned and saw she was being watched by a young girl.
‘Fiona?’ The girl was a spectral version of her daughter, old and young, smiling and grimacing, laughing with joy and screaming with pain.
The phantom rose and danced around Anastasia, leaning over to kiss her forehead and skipping away to join other children playing by the stream nearby. The silky soft dust turned to thick black mud, squelching when she moved, threatening to suck her in and hold her forever. She relaxed, stretched out, tr
